Mrs Van Hopper

Mrs Van Hopper is a wealthy, snobbish American widow who has spent many seasons at the Hotel Cote d'Azur in Monte Carlo, where she employs the young, orphaned narrator as a paid companion at ninety pounds a year. She is a woman of coarse appetites and relentless social ambition, described by the narrator as short-bodied, ill-balanced on tottering high heels, with a fussy, frilly blouse, a large bosom, swinging hips, and a new hat pierced with a monster quill. She carries a gigantic bag that holds passports, engagement diaries, and bridge scores, and toys with a lorgnette that she uses as an enemy to other people's privacy. Her method of attack on any notable person is so downright and sudden that there is seldom opportunity to escape; she stakes a claim on a particular sofa in the lounge, midway between the reception hall and the restaurant, and all who come and go must pass her by. She sometimes employs the narrator as bait to draw her prey, sending her across the lounge with a verbal message, the loan of a book or paper, or the address of some shop, and though titles are preferred by her, any face once seen in a social paper serves as well.

Role in the Plot and the Introduction to Maxim

It is Mrs Van Hopper's snobbery that creates the novel's central encounter. Spotting Maxim de Winter in the restaurant, she forces an introduction by sending the narrator for a letter from her nephew, then risks a bare-faced introduction on her own when the narrator is delayed. She installs herself beside Maxim on the sofa, talking eagerly and loudly, fluttering the letter in her hand, and trampling on the preserved ground of Manderley with clumsy questions about the minstrels' gallery and valuable portraits. Maxim's cold, sardonic replies—including the remark that the name "Ethelred the Unready" was given to the king while staying with his family because he was invariably late for dinner—are lost on her, and she blunders on, impervious. When she later suggests that the narrator could make herself useful to Maxim by unpacking for him, Maxim rebuffs her with the family motto, "He travels the fastest who travels alone," and leaves. Mrs Van Hopper, misunderstanding the snub, tells the narrator that her efforts to monopolize the conversation had embarrassed her, and that men loathe that sort of thing.

Relationship with the Narrator

Mrs Van Hopper treats the narrator with a mixture of casual condescension and petty tyranny. She is training her to be a "companion," a role the narrator once looked up in a dictionary as "a friend of the bosom." At meals, the waiter, sensing the narrator's inferior position, places before her a plate of ham and tongue that somebody had sent back half an hour before as badly carved. Mrs Van Hopper concentrates on her food, the sauce running down her chin, and never intervenes. When the narrator is sent on errands, she is expected to produce props like a juggler's assistant and then wait silent and attentive for her cue. After the introduction to Maxim, Mrs Van Hopper accuses the narrator of putting herself forward, saying, "Your efforts to monopolise the conversation quite embarrassed me, and I'm sure it did him." The narrator, kneeling on the window-seat, thinks of the ashtrays she will have to clear and the squashed stubs stained with lipstick that will sprawl in company with discarded chocolate creams.

The Influenza and Its Consequences

Mrs Van Hopper's influenza, which keeps her in bed for a fortnight, is the crucial plot device that allows the narrator to spend her days driving with Maxim. The narrator lies to her, saying she has been playing tennis with the professional, while in truth she has been lunching with Maxim every day. When Mrs Van Hopper recovers, she decides abruptly to sail for New York with her daughter Helen, whose child Nancy has a threatened appendix. The narrator, desperate at the thought of leaving Maxim, goes to his room to say goodbye, and Maxim proposes marriage. Mrs Van Hopper, when told, is speechless at first, then recovers and makes a series of barbed remarks. She tells the narrator, "You haven't the experience, you don't know that milieu. You can scarcely string two sentences together at my bridge teas, what are you going to say to all his friends? The Manderley parties were famous when she was alive." Her final, devastating thrust is delivered as she looks at the narrator in the mirror: "Of course, you know why he is marrying you, don't you? You haven't flattered yourself he's in love with you? The fact is that empty house got on his nerves to such an extent he nearly went off his head. He admitted as much before you came into the room. He just can't go on living there alone."

Character and Thematic Significance

Mrs Van Hopper is a flat character in Forster's sense, built around a single idea: the vulgar, insatiable social climber. She functions as the threshold guardian and the herald in the hero's journey, the figure whose action—the forced introduction—propels the narrator into Maxim's world, and whose final cruel words plant the seed of doubt that will haunt the narrator throughout her marriage. She represents the world of superficial snobbery and transactional relationships that the narrator must escape, and her coarse materialism stands in stark contrast to the romantic, idealized vision of Manderley that the narrator carries. She is also a figure of comic relief, her blunders and misreadings providing moments of levity in an otherwise tense narrative. Her name, "Van Hopper," suggests a hopping from one social perch to another, and her character is a satirical portrait of the American expatriate who mistakes acquaintance with the famous for genuine connection. She disappears from the story after the marriage, but her words echo in the narrator's mind, contributing to the sense of inadequacy and the shadow of Rebecca that pervades the novel.